Lying Liars

[Content Note: War on agency; privacy violations; identity theft; anti-choice harassment.]

Sharona Coutts and Sofia Resnick, two members of RH Reality Check's investigative team, have written a great piece, "The Faces and Fake Names of People Behind Planned Parenthood Attack Videos," in which they detail how the anti-choice operatives posing as employees of a fake company called BioMax "may have violated California and federal law on forgery, credit card fraud, and identity theft" by using apparently false identities. And, among their findings is this fuckery, detailed in an incredibly creepy passage:

[A]nother detail from the a/k/a Bistro video suggests [David Daleiden]'s group may have gone beyond simply concocting identities, and might have co-opted the identity of a real person—one who shares the name of a California woman who went to the same elementary and high schools as the leader of this attack campaign.

Toward the end of the film, the woman who identifies herself as Susan can be seen removing a Bank of America card from her wallet, and using it to pay the bill.

Yet the name on the credit card is not Susan Tennenbaum, but rather, appears to be Brianna Allen.

BioMax's alleged employees refer to "Brianna" in the three videos that have been released so far. RH Reality Check emailed the address provided by the BioMax operative who called herself Brianna Allen but received no response. BioMax has not connected RH Reality Check with any real person who will publicly identify herself as Brianna Allen.

However, RH Reality Check has obtained evidence that suggests the group's leader, Daleiden, does know a woman named Brianna Allen.

After seeing her name referenced in our earlier reporting, Brianna M. Allen of Davis, California, contacted RH Reality Check to let us know that she had no ties to Daleiden's organization and has not been in contact with him for 15 years.

Allen was the president of the student feminist club at Davis Senior High School at the same time that Daleiden was a student there, she said.

"Even in high school I knew he was adamantly against it [abortion]. He was very outspoken about being Catholic and more conservative. And we were very open about being liberal and pro-choice," she told RH Reality Check. "Last night I just thought, 'Oh God, what if that's why he chose my name?' But I kind of wrote it off as, 'No, that's ridiculous.'"

If Daleiden's group used Brianna M. Allen's information to open a credit card account, they could have violated state or federal laws that prohibit credit card fraud, which carries a potential three-year prison sentence and would be easy to prove, Kraut said.

Allen stressed that she does not feel any ill will toward Daleiden personally, nor does she have definitive proof that Daleiden created a credit card in her name. Indeed, Brianna Allen is a fairly common name in the United States. Yet, Allen has been unable to access her credit reports online in the past few days, despite having been able to do so in the past.

"If it is just a weird coincidence, it would be a really, really weird coincidence," Allen said.

These fucking people.

My contempt for this shit cannot be measured on a scale fathomable by human intellect.